India, May 31 -- In Tetavali village, a five-hour drive 180 km from Pune, where traditional millets were once grown in every field, change had quietly crept in. Most of the youths in the village had migrated to nearby cities for jobs, and those who stayed back were cultivating only rice and had forgotten about the legacy of millet farming. Nitin Deodhar, 59, and his wife Meenakshi, 58, who visited the village quite often, saw both a crisis and an opportunity here. This gave birth to Sonkan in 2021, a startup that sells nutritious and wholesome millet-based foods, and other products of Konkan.

How it started

Nitin, who was at the time running a very successful MEP (Mechanical, Electrical Plumbing) Consultancy offering services across the...